This is the memory usage that sweclockers got on their 580gtx on the ultra, high, medium and low setting.

Looks like ultra and 1gb vram is no big no no.

I was screwing around last night... put everything on low with HBAO and 4xaa and it was running ~680.
I'm assuming the textures and draw distance are the biggest factor and i'm gonna work on turn it up over time until the stuttering starts

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However, I am in the extreme minority, and I understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with me

Funny is the game auto-selected "Ultra" for my textures and I have 1gb video cards. I noticed some hitching but mainly due to those CAP3's, the CAP4's still cause some hitching and I had the least trouble without any caps.

Why does the squad system suck so much? I can't spawn on anyone 99% of the time. Yesterday my friend was in my squad and I could only spawn on him. He could spawn on the other two guys but I couldn't, so I had to wait for him to spawn and then spawn on him

Also it's damn near impossible to join a friends squad or join any empty one so your friends can join up with you. There's only "Find A Squad" and "Leave Squad". No "Join Selected Squad"

Funny is the game auto-selected "Ultra" for my textures and I have 1gb video cards. I noticed some hitching but mainly due to those CAP3's, the CAP4's still cause some hitching and I had the least trouble without any caps.

i dont think running out of vram is really hurting us anymore. i think it wont really impact performance till you really go over your cards vram.

leave your current squad. then highlight the squad you want to join and a tiny join button shows up at the bottom.

There are just some things about the menus and key bindings that just not user freindly.

I was flying jets last night and apparently when you use the joystick hat to look around in free look mode, it won't take any other input from the joystick so the plane flies in a straight line while I'm trying too look around. That is bad if there's someone on my tail.

Also, I can't fly helicopters and then switch to planes without having to change the control inversion. If I don't change I'll pull back on the joystick and the helo will nose dive while in a jet it's fine an the jet flies up. I've got a Microsoft sidewinder so it is an older unsupported joystick but really, Is it that hard to make the input be consistent. Some of these things might work with better more intuitive menus or ways to bind things, but as it is now, it's frustrating trying to set up even basic controls.

The ground combat so far has been a blast though and there is so much to learn. It's deffinately not a game where you can hop in and succeed without some teamwork or knowledge of the map and objectives.

still cant figure out video ram. doesnt really seem to hurt performance when you go over how much you have

it does for me, for example I play @ 1600P with ultra settings and it goes down to 20 fps then back to 60 every couple of seconds while using max amount of vram 1536mb or so, when I put down AA to 2x, turn post process aa effect off and the game uses 1300-1400 on average, sometimes even 1500 but fps is pinned @ 60 fps all the time, maybe it only effect performance when you go over by a large amount of vram.

"Yesterday AMD sent us a benchmarking guide for Battlefield 3 written by Antal Tungler, AMD's PR Manager. In the guide, Antal recommends using Nvidia's FXAA instead of MSAA.

"You'll notice that we recommend the 'Ultra' preset in lot of our scenarios, without the use of MSAA (Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing). This is a traditional technique to remove aliasing from objects in the visible scene. It provides significant image quality improvements, at least in most cases. But because of its nature, working only on actual geometry, some objects will not benefit at all from this process, like foliage or fences, that are just textures, sprites etc. Luckily DICE implemented a new technique as well called FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing), which is a process that works pretty much on all objects. Another significant difference between the two is that while FXAA has a very small impact on performance, however using MSAA can essentially cut your framerate in half."

"If we view the same data in another way we can also see that once we add 4xMSAA we are lowering our frame rate so much that we are moving from a playable to non-playable gaming scenario on some high end graphics solutions if we use the standard 30fps average for playable. Many of the extremely competitive Battlefield 3 players will want as many frames as they can get making MSAA a questionable option! We can also see from both charts provided that FXAA has a relatively low performance cost for the great level of Image Quality it provides."

"The idea behind the following pages comparisons is not to discredit MSAA or the implementation of MSAA in Battlefield 3. MSAA is a wonderful technique that can be used to improve the image quality of your gaming. Users should be wary however that MSAA will not improve all objects in the game and comes at a high performance cost to the user that may not be necessary for someone looking to maximize their performance and gaming experience. It is highly recommended that users take time to toggle settings themselves and determine if the Image Quality improvement that MSAA provides is worth the performance hit their frames per second will take while gaming."

What are the best settings in this game? I am running ultra preset w/ vsync on. Game runs smooth enough without issues but would like to know what are the best settings for AMD? If someone can post a screenshot that would be really helpful.

Use this proxy if you're trying to bypass the date check. I would advise you to not log into battelog at the time, and possibly change your Origin password after. Who knows what information the proxy is recording, etc. Worked for me:

What are the best settings in this game? I am running ultra preset w/ vsync on. Game runs smooth enough without issues but would like to know what are the best settings for AMD? If someone can post a screenshot that would be really helpful.

I have everything on Ultra except that Post AA thingy completely off.
Blurs the screen. No vsync either.

Use this proxy if you're trying to bypass the date check. I would advise you to not log into battelog at the time, and possibly change your Origin password after. Who knows what information the proxy is recording, etc. Worked for me: